Bay Area-based nonprofit Fair Trade USA works across a wide range of industries to ensure ethical production of consumer products. The group's Fair Trade Apparel program, which was established in 2012, grew an astonishing 358% in 2014. With recent the garment factory tragedies around the world, Fair Trade USA is offering actual solutions for many brands to help address supply chain issues. The group gives garment industry workers a voice, and ensures the safety of laborers and artisans around the world.

To blood diamonds, sweatshop apparel and other products to avoid, now add slave shrimp.
The global fishing industry, and the Thai fishing fleet in particular, is increasingly being called to account for abuses that represent not just virtual slavery, but the real thing.

At the end of a recent feast at Restaurant R’evolution in New Orleans, I ordered a cup of hot tea and was presented with an elegant silver kettle filled with an intoxicatingly aromatic lemon meritage brew. Another notable meal enjoyed not long ago at Fixe in Austin began with a tableside steeping of their house iced tea, a black tea and fruit blend customized for them by a local “tea guru.”